What’s Good: Having always been interesting in quantum tunneling (it is not theoretically impossible for matter to move anywhere in the universe), I like how, instead of time travel, this is a fantasy film about spatial travel. The premise is a solid one.
What’s Not: But the film doesn’t jump beyond the premise. It touches upon some mythology issues (the history of the jumpers and those chasing them) but is ultimately uninterested in developing them. Like, this character can go anywhere and all he does is sit atop the sphinx in his lawn chair. Speaking of undeveloped, Rachael Bilson is about as interesting as a doorknob.

This fantasy film has been brought to you by Doug Liman of “Swingers,” “Go,” “Bourne Identity” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” fame. The commonality is that Liman makes films about cocky people as well as films about characters who possess enormous undercurrents of power… and are cocky about it. “Jumper” finds both traits and zaps them into its young and dumb protagonist, a rouge brat played by Haden Christensen with mommy issues and a proclivity for, oh nothing, tweaking the time and space continuum. Kids these days. As a painfully protracted prologue tells us, every since he was a teen David Rice as been able to jumps through self-perpetuated wormholes that can take him to anyplace he imagines. As we come to find out, David uses his power to attain wealth by cosmically tunneling into bank vaults and impressing girls. We, on the other hand, are rendered powerless to jump the hell out of the theater (sorry, every lame critic is required by law to used that bad line). C+

Flame On